


The Elusive Cronut

by TroubleScout



Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Coffee Shops, F/M, Fluff, Logan & Veronica AU Week 2020, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23372491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TroubleScout/pseuds/TroubleScout
Summary: Veronica and Logan meet-cute in a coffee shop over a cronut.
Relationships: Logan Echolls & Jackie Cook, Logan Echolls/Veronica Mars, Veronica Mars & Jackie Cook
Comments: 22
Kudos: 77





	The Elusive Cronut

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlinginmyway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlinginmyway/gifts), [jmazzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmazzy/gifts).



> Originally posted on Tumblr an age ago as a gift for Darlinginmyway. I forgot to post it when I posted all my old stuff a while back and AU week seemed like a perfect excuse to remedy that. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> LoVe Prompt: “I see you every morning at the corner coffee shop. You never get there in time to buy a cronut, so I bought one for you and waited.”

Veronica bursts into the coffee shop with her usual bluster. Her small frame weighed down with a hefty load of coursework and in dire need of caffeine. She scans the pastry display case and sees one lone, plated cronut perched on top of the counter. She dares to hope.

“Taken,” Jackie shoots her down brusquely from behind the register just as Logan returns from the mens room. He immediately stuffs the pastry into his mouth, gluttonously indulgent.

Veronica glares at him, her annoyance not even thinly veiled.

“What?” Logan says caught off guard, his mouth full and covered in tiny, sugary crystals. “I washed my hands.” He’s genuinely mystified by the level of irritation the stranger’s piercing blue eyes are leveling his way and the corner of Veronica’s mouth curls despite herself.

He tips the remaining half a cronut in her direction with an eyebrow bob, offering to share. Half serious, half instigating her further.

“I don’t want your cooties,” Veronica bristles at his charm, frustrated even further by the amused grin dancing across his face sending butterflies fluttering in her belly.

“Quit scaring the customers,” Jackie admonishes him before addressing Veronica. “The usual?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Veronica makes her way to her regular seat at the end of the counter.

Jackie turns back towards Logan. “Poor girl, always too late for the good stuff.”

“You could always save one _for her_ , you know.”

Jackie taps the sign reading, ‘First come, first serve’, with her pen. “My pity only extends so far.”

“I’m wounded,” he says, a dramatic hand over his heart, “but you’re a peach,” kissing her on the cheek.

“See you tomorrow,” she tosses as he goes.

———

During the following weeks, Logan arrives at the shop everyday in time to enjoy his flakey, sugary confection. And almost everyday on his way out the door, sure enough, he witnesses Veronica arriving just late enough to miss enjoying one of her own. Sure, she makes do with the multitude of other picked-over options, but when Jackie regularly informs her, “None today,” he can always read her disappointment.

He’s gets there post-surfing and pre-class, and Veronica arrives post-late night work hours and pre-class as well. Sadly this means they barely cross paths, but after that first encounter they make eye contact in passing. She picks up his dropped newspaper on his way out, he holds the door for her on her way in. A dozen wordless gestures slowly tallying up to something more. Something like anticipation.

He wonders how he’d ever missed taking notice of her presence before, when now all he finds himself doing is staring at the door, waiting for her small, purpose-filled presence to appear. And she finds herself casting his broad back wayward glances as he exits, giving herself a little thrill.

One day however, she catches him chuckle with delight from his usual booth. Turns out it’s at her furrowed face of disappointment regarding her sad, plain, un-glazed donut, all the while he polishes off his own buttery cronut. Then and there she decides he’s not charming at all, no matter what the little hairs on the back of her neck have to say.

The next morning, she arrives to find him without a plate accompanying his coffee and is secretly smug that he too had to go without a precious cronut. She sits down to contemplate whether she should treat herself to a blueberry muffin when Jackie swings around to place a plate in front of him with not one, but two delectable, flaky cronuts on it. Veronica instantly decides he’s a straight-up jackass.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She swings back to her coffee and stews to herself. “What’s a girl gotta do?”

“You could try arriving earlier,” Jackie offers while passing by and Veronica’s not so fond of her either. “Bitch,” she mutters under her breath.

“Sometimes, but it’s sorta charming in its own way, don’t you think?”

Veronica turns to see Logan now seated beside her, cronut in hand, munching away.

“Maybe if it was pointed in your direction,” she shoots him daggers and gives him a saccharine sneer.

“Someone’s in a mood. I almost feel like rescinding this kind gesture.”

“What gest—" Confused, Veronica looks down only to find his second cronut next to her coffee. She takes a beat, pretending not to. “Are you sure you can spare it? They seem to be on ration in this joint.”

“Sure we can.”

Veronica eyes Jackie down the way, remembers the way he kisses her cheek and their easy banter. The way she always has a cronut _for him_. “Aren’t those presents from your adoring public,” she eyes him skeptically, then pushes the pastry aside, resolute. “No thanks.”

Disappointed, he tries playful, “Still afraid you might catch something?”

“Seems likely,” she says dismissively, but he hears the disappointment in her voice, too.

She tries to go back to work when he takes her hand and gently draws two concentric circles on her palm, then taps his finger in side them twice. She’s so stunned by the audacity of it, the unexpected contact, that she doesn’t think to draw her hand away until he’s done.

“Did you just give me a cootie shot?” she asks, incredulous.

“I see you here every morning and you never get here in time to buy a cronut, so I bought you one and I waited.”

She swallows hard at his soft voice and eyes him skeptically, “Won’t your little friend be jealous?”

“Jackie?” he muses and it catches the waitress’s ear. “She’s a little possessive, but sisters are like that sometimes. One of these days she’s gotta learn to share her toys.”

“You’re going to be late for class, again!” Jackie scolds him from across the cafe. Logan’s been late a lot lately.

“You’re leaving?” Veronica blurts, her own disappointment frustratingly transparent to her.

“Have to, but you’re vaccinated now. You can enjoy.” He shares a slow smile as he rises, adding, “I myself am cootie-free though, just so you know,” before he exits.

She’s at a loss.

———

Over the next couple days Logan doesn’t see Veronica at all and wonders disappointedly if he misread everything between them. But then Thursday arrives with a pleasant surprise. He arrives to the coffee shop to find his booth already occupied; her blonde, tiny body sitting in it with her back to the door. He skips a little on his way over to her, a jaunt of uncurbed eagerness seeping out of him. He catches Jackie looking at him like he’s a total nerdburgler, but ignores her, instead striding up next to Veronica as collectedly as he can. He sees a full plate in front of her, piled four cronuts high, and grins. “You planning on eating all of those by yourself?”

“You snooze, you lose and clearly you have snost and lost,” she boasts, lifting a cronut to her mouth to take an exceedingly large bite. As she swallows, she peers up at him still standing there, unsure, and a smirk forms on her sugared lips. “You gonna join me here or what? Bench ain't warming itself.”

He smiles and slides into the seat. “You’re here early today.”

“Was tired of missing out on the good stuff.” She tears another bite from her pastry, but her eyes never leave his. “I’m Veronica, by the way.”

“Logan.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Jackie and Logan are siblings here. No, there is no good explanation. :)


End file.
